In U.S. Pat. No. 3,643,851, assigned to the present assignee and entitled SKIN STAPLER, there is disclosed a surgical stapler for joining the disunited skin of a patient. The surgical stapler disclosed in this commonly assigned patent employs a staple-carrying cartridge comprising an anvil adapted to lie flush with the skin, a plurality of staples which are to be folded around the anvil, and a pusher for ejecting and bending the staples around the anvil. The surgical stapling instrument adapted to accept the staple-carrying cartridge in this commonly assigned patent is powered by a pressurized gas. Later developments of the gas-powered stapler and cartridges for applying surgical staples to external skin and internal fascia are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,662,939, assigned to the present assignee and entitled "SURGICAL STAPLER FOR SKIN AND FASCIA."
Although these gas-powered instruments represent a marked advance over the state-of-the-art, there are certain disadvantages associated with the use of gas-powered units of this type. One of the obvious disadvantages is the necessity for replacing the gas cartridges after their contents have been exhausted, and a second is the inconvenience associated with storing and maintaining a supply of these cartridges. Also, the powering mechanism is complex, is hence somewhat costly, and comprises numerous close-tolerance elements which tend to be susceptible to malfunction. For these and other obvious reasons, it would be advantageous to have a simple surgical stapling instrument adapted to accept staple-carrying cartridges of the type disclosed in the above commonly assigned patents, but which is powered manually and without the intervention of a gaseous medium and the disadvantages associated therewith.
Accordingly, it is a broad object of the present invention to provide a surgical stapling instrument for stapling the disunited skin or fascia of a patient which is manually powered and wholly operated by mechanical means.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a surgical stapler in which the staple-carrying cartridge is mounted so that it is rotatable relative to the hand-held main body portion of the instrument so that the staples can be applied at any angle without the necessity for rotating the hand-held portion of the instrument.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a surgical stapler with means for ensuring that the staple-advancing drive means of the instrument is activated only once in each stapling operation.
Another object of the invention is to provide means for preventing a driving stroke of a surgical stapler absent the association with a staple-carrying cartridge.
It is yet a further object of the present invention to provide means for preventing the insertion of a staple-carrying cartridge into the surgical stapler until the driving mechanism of the stapler has been returned to its initial position.
It is still a further object of the present invention to provide a surgical stapler with means to alert the surgeon when a staple has been advanced into the ready position and is about to be ejected and formed.
These and other objects of the invention, as well as many of the attendant advantages thereof, will become more readily apparent when reference is made to the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.